1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a portable data entry terminal and, more particularly, to a self-contained, portable data entry terminal positioned within a cordless, wand-type enclosure.
2. Description of the Prior Art
The ability of computers to handle large amounts of data has grown dramatically while the cost of computing has decreased significantly, giving business and industry a powerful management tool. Yet, the ability to interface working operations, where the data exists, with computers, where the data is managed, has lagged behind. Most attention has been placed on developing the main frame or central computer and most early applications of computing power resided in scientific laboratories or central business offices where the data to be managed were close at hand.
Management has come to recognize that data that is meaningful to capture is found anywhere, from the supermarket shelf for inventory and the factory floor for work management to a desert pipeline for monitoring. As a result, in an attempt to find new and useful applications for the computer power it has, business is reaching out to the factory and warehouse floor and to remote field operations in order to capture, contain and manage the myriad of important bits of information generated in these locations.
In order to be responsive to this need of business, MSI Data Corporation, the assignee of the present application, has developed a line of portable data entry terminals which record data at its point of origin for subsequent transmission to computers. With such a portable data entry terminal, persons collecting data become more productive by using such a terminal for direct input of large amounts of data while performing work tasks.
Initially, data entry terminals were cassette based to record basic inventory information on the retail or stockroom floor for subsequent transmission to computers. The next step was to miniaturize those terminals through microelectronics, making them truly portable and with large solid state memories in order to handle more complex inventory and sales entry information. Recently, terminals have been designed to enable them to be easily programmed for different applications, extending the use of a single termination to cover multiple job functions.
A conventional portable data entry terminal often includes a wand including a bar code optical reader, the wand being connected by a cord to a hand-held data entry terminal. The hand-held terminal includes the signal conditioning electronics, a microprocessor, suitable memory and a power source, such as a battery. The hand-held terminal typically includes a keyboard for entering data commands and a display for readout of data. A typical portable data entry terminal of this type, without the wand, is shown in U.S. Pat. No. D. 249,345.
It has been found that such a portable data entry terminal is somewhat limited in its applicability. While ideally suited for inventory control, sales reporting and remote field operations, such a complete portable data entry terminal is too bulky and expensive for many applications. Accordingly, it is the object of the present invention to still further expand the use of computers and to find new and useful applications therefore by providing an even greater ability to capture, contain and manage data.
In other fields, it has been proposed to reduce the size of an electronic system by placing major portions thereof in a cordless, wand-type enclosure. For example, in U.S. Pat. No. 3,826,900, an optical decoding system employs a hand-held, optical probe scanner, for optically reading coded information from merchandise labels. The hand-held unit includes a transmitter for transmitting the information to a receiver for processing. Also, in U.S. Pat. No. 4,091,270, an electronic calculator including an optical bar code reader for entering program commands, is housed within a selfcontained, cordless, wand-type enclosure. The enclosure is further provided with a display for displaying entered data and execution results. However, neither of these patented systems are suitable for use as a portable data entry and storage terminal in that neither has the necessary data storage capability.